Conveyor belts have been commonly used for transporting materials or the like. However, since the conveyor belts are demanded to have a larger size and higher strength to increase transport volume, enhance transport efficiency, and the like, conveyor belts with total lengths of up to several kilometers have even emerged in recent years.
As a result, equipment costs and power consumption have been increased, and thus belt conveyor systems that require lower costs and lower power consumption have been demanded. In particular, investigations in lowering the costs and power consumption of belt conveyors by improving characteristics of rubber that constitutes the belt have been conducted.
In such a circumstance, claim 1 of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-38133A discloses “a rubber composition for a conveyor belt comprising a rubber component containing natural rubber (NR) and polybutadiene rubber (BR), carbon black, and the like”. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-38133A indicates that the use of such a rubber composition for a conveyor belt can reduce the power consumption.